May 14, 2015
Note: The original title of this post was "A Global Warming Fingerprint Confirmed: Upper Troposphere Warming" because I was thinking that upper troposphere warming was a fingerprint. John Cook contacted me to let me know that he didn't think it was. The reason it is not is that more than one…
May 14, 2015
Bjorn Lomborg has written an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal lamenting the decision of the University of Western Australia (UWA) to nix previously developed plans to accept a $4 million dollar payment from the conservative Australian government, to be matched by university money, to implement a…
May 13, 2015
Global warming is typically measured at the surface, with data from thermometers all across the land areas and sea surface temperatures combined. That isn't the whole story, of course. Much of the added heat, an effect of human generated greenhouse gas pollution, goes into the upper 2,000 meters or…
May 13, 2015
Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones recently posted an item called "Scores of Scientists Raise Alarm About the Long-Term Health Effects of Cellphones." I like Josh's work, but there are some problems with this article I want to point out, some of which parallel problems in the more general discussion…
May 13, 2015
As an anthropologist, I find the interface between technology and the larger culture in which it is embedded fascinating. You all know the old story of the family cook who habitually cuts the ends off the roast before slipping it in the oven. One day her child, hoping some day to be the family…
May 9, 2015
I remember joking with my friend Ana about how her name would be attached to the first named storm in the 2015 Atlantic Hurricane season. It turns out Ana is an exceptional individual. Both of them.
Ana Miller as Aisha Lefu in "The Recompense: A Star Wars Fan Film."
Ana, my friend, is an actor…
May 9, 2015
Sometimes science sees something change – there is more of something, or less, or more importantly, there is a change in the rate of some phenomenon or in its pattern of variability. But sometimes science looks out there in the world and observes something that was probably there all along (though…
May 8, 2015
Over the last several weeks we've seen the University of Western Australia accept a $4 million dollar Federal grant to develop a "Consensus Centre" in the mold of Bjorn Lomborg's non profit, with Lomborg as a key player. Lomborg has been heavily criticized for his lack of scholarship and seemingly…
May 6, 2015
It is reported that ten cars exploded or burned when a BNSF oil train derailed near a small town in North Dakota.
Look at the picture above. Huxley's day care is very close to these tracks, close enough that the day care home would be totally within that zone of buring fiery debris.
There are…
May 6, 2015
The Earth's climate is warming. The upper oceans are warming, the sea surface temperatures are elevated, the air in the lower Troposphere, where we live, is warming. This warming is caused almost entirely by the increase in human generated greenhouse gasses and the positive (not positive in a…
May 6, 2015
The Canadian Province of Alberta has been likened to the American State of Texas. Energy and cattle, energy barons and cowboys. But with mountains.
Yesterday a relatively liberal party, the New Democratic Party (NDP), won a surprise victory in the provincial election, ousting the 44 year long…
May 5, 2015
The information in this post has been updated, expanded on, and moved to THIS LOCATION.Please click through, and sorry for the inconvenience.
May 5, 2015
I'm auditing the EdEx course "Denial101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial." This is Week 2: Global Warming ins Happening. The course is covering indicators of warming, what is happening in the Cryosphere, and related matters.
Here is an example lecture segment:
A central theme of this…
May 4, 2015
I recently noted that there are reasons to think that the effects of human caused climate change are coming on faster than previously expected. Since I wrote that (in late January) even more evidence has come along, so I thought it was time for an update.
First a bit of perspective. Scientists have…
April 30, 2015
Michael Halpern, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and climate scientist Michael Mann have written an editorial for Science, "Transparency and harassment."
Open records laws hold Universities and other public institutions accountable, protecting against biasing influences such as we might see…
April 30, 2015
Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming by Michael Mann and Lee Kump is everyperson’s guide to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The IPCC issues a periodic set of reports on the state of global climate change, and has been doing so for almost two decades. It…
April 29, 2015
You all heard that gangs in Baltimore had banded together to go after cops. But if you did hear that, you heard wrong. Gangs are universally vilified, and the term "gang" is also used by law enforcement and their other as a euphemism. (For people it is OK to shoot, apparently.) The reality of…
April 29, 2015
I recently posted an overview of a new climate study, Comparing the model-simulated global warming signal to observations using empirical estimates of unforced noise, by Patrick T. Brown, Wenhong Li, Eugene C. Cordero & Steven A. Mauget. That study is potentially important because of what it…
April 28, 2015
A group of scientists attending a major conference get together in a bar. They talk, but they agree on nothing because they are critical academics. The server comes along to take the beer order and says, "I noticed you all are constantly arguing. What are you arguing about?"
"Sensitivity," one of…
April 28, 2015
I have a few partly formed, preliminary thoughts about some people's reaction to Baltimore (originally posted on my friend Miles Kurland's page as a comment, then on my facebook page, edited.)
What I'm mainly reacting to is the constant drone of people saying that rioting and anti-state violence in…
April 28, 2015
From "Reactions" (from the American Chemical Society).. Without chemicals, super heroes would be impossible!
See Also: The Physics of Superheroes–Jim Kaklios
April 26, 2015
That is a good question, and difficult to answer. If it turns out to be, it will be the warmest calendar year in the instrumental record, which goes back into the 19th century.
Regardless of what El Nino (ENSO) does, 2015 will be a warm year. Why? Because everything is warm and getting warmer…
April 26, 2015
Just so you know. This is not something where you watch the first minute and get it and go "oh that's funny" or not and them move on. The plot is complex you must watch it until the very very end or don't bother. Just sayin' this because people seem to not do that a lot. Not a good way to go…
April 25, 2015
Remember the last Olympics, during the parade, where instead of seeing the athletes march along grouped by country, we saw unidentifiable people who were all either taking selfies or grabbing videos of everything going on around them, but we couldn't tell who they were because their cell phones…
April 24, 2015
It is like finding a leak in your roof. I remember once up at the cabin, noticing that my waders were full of water and pointing this out to my wife.
"You're supposed to hang the waders upside down. Keeps dead mice from falling in there."
Well, I thought, if any mice fell in these waders and…
April 24, 2015
This is Part I of a two part treatment of new research on climate change. Part II is here.
There is a new paper out, Comparing the model-simulated global warming signal to observations using empirical estimates of unforced noise, by Patrick T. Brown,Wenhong Li, Eugene C. Cordero & Steven A.…
April 23, 2015
I once knew a young woman who was in high school and shall remain nameless. One day I picked her up at school to drive her home, and asked how she was doing.
"Depressed, actually," she said.
"Why, did something go wrong at school?"
"Kinda," she replied. "The social studies teacher was out today…
April 23, 2015
I've written here about some of Bjorn Lomborg's work, generally critical of it. But the Abbot Government in Australia apparently likes what Lomborg is doing well enough to have earmarked $4 million (in some currency or another) to ensconce a version of his academically questionable enterprise right…
April 22, 2015
Calbuco is a volcano in southern Chile. This one erupts fairly frequently averaging about every 20 years, sometimes quite impresively. The largest eruption during historic times in Chile occurred at Calbuco in 1894.
It is erupting now. Evacuations have been ordered. Here is some amazing…
April 21, 2015
John Cook, of the University of Queensland, and his colleagues, have created a MOOC ... Massive Open Online Course ... called "Making Sense of Climate Science Denial."
Why does this matter? How does it work? What can you do?
All of these questions are answered here: University offering free…
